Synthesis Wizard

# Chapter 133: The Death Knell Beetle, Kasham’s Controller

Carolina’s efficiency was high.

The next day, the corpses of Kasham’s insects were delivered to Su Nan’s laboratory.

Under the bright light of a magic stone lamp, twelve gruesome insect beasts lay on the wide workbench.

These beetle-like creatures had bright red, hard shells, ten limbs, four black round eyes, two sharp claws, and a pair of serrated mandibles.

But what was even more eye-catching was a huge bell-shaped chitinous protrusion on top of its mouthparts, looking like a giant horn.

According to Carolina’s description, this creature was called the Death Knell Beetle.

Their shells were as strong as steel, their sharp claws could easily tear through solid rock, and they could also emit ear-piercing sound waves that could make people bleed from their seven orifices.

Adult Death Knell Beetles only had the fighting strength of Probationary Knights, not considered strong.

Especially when hundreds or even thousands of Death Knell Beetles simultaneously erupted in ear-piercing sound waves, even Great Knights would find it hard to bear.

Previously, the combined forces of the city-states of幽湖, 玛图, and 奥森 had suffered heavy losses under the swarm attacks of the Death Knell Beetles, having to pay a huge price each time to wipe out the insect swarms.

And in Kasham’s insect nest, in that narrow, semi-enclosed environment, the sound wave attacks of the Death Knell Beetles were even more powerful.

The Red Widow and the Black Duke dared not counterattack Kasham, largely because of this.

“Insect beasts that can emit sound waves? That’s quite rare.”

Kasham’s insect swarm wasn’t just the Death Knell Beetles, there were also Jellyfish Insects, Giant Mouth Sand Insects, Six-Winged Insects, and other insect beasts.

But the Death Knell Beetles were the main force of the swarm.

Su Nan used his Master’s Hand to move a corpse to his front, and began to dissect it.

As the dissection progressed, more of the Death Knell Beetle’s body structure gradually became visible.

The huge bell-shaped chitinous protrusion on its head was actually a horn-shaped tumor.

The ear-piercing sound waves of the Death Knell Beetle were emitted from this tumor.

The tumor extended from its shoulders, suddenly opening outwards above the sharp mouthparts, and four black insect-like eyes were also located on both sides of this tumor.

Essentially, this creature had no real head, the giant horn-shaped tumor had replaced its head.

After Su Nan cut open the tumor, he also found the insect brain inside.

“What a strange structure.”

Su Nan couldn’t help but exclaim.

He had seen many insects with strange appearances, but he had never seen such a unique structure as the Death Knell Beetle.

According to his experience, creatures with such structures were usually not naturally grown, they were more likely to be artificially induced mutations, or products of genetic modification. 𝙧ＡNŐβЕš

“This is most likely the result of biological modification by some Wizard Apprentice.”

Su Nan’s heart moved.

Could it be that there was a Wizard Apprentice hidden behind Kasham?

If that was the case, attacking Kasham might not be as easy as he originally thought.

“If there really is a Wizard Apprentice controlling Kasham, then what is his purpose in sending his insect swarms to hunt and kill creatures every few months?”

Su Nan was puzzled.

After a moment, he shook his head, no longer dwelling on it.

No matter what the Wizard Apprentice’s purpose was, Kasham had to be dealt with.

Otherwise, insect plagues would erupt every few months, how could he develop the surrounding mineral veins and continue to explore more?

The only good news was that Puppets were very effective against the sound wave attacks of the Death Knell Beetles.

After all, Puppets did not have the auditory organs and visceral systems of ordinary creatures, making them essentially immune to sound wave attacks.

In terms of dealing with the Death Knell Beetles, the Magic Puppet Legion still had a big advantage.

After dissecting all ten or so insect corpses, recording the data in his experimental notebook, Su Nan then waved his hand, sprinkled flames, disposed of all the corpses, and turned to leave the laboratory.

Kasham’s recent activity was becoming more frequent, and the insect plague would likely erupt soon.

He had to speed up the refining of Magic Puppets and enhance the power at his disposal as much as possible.

“These are the architectural design drawings for the other six provincial Knight Academies, all based on the Dragonheart Knight Academy, see if there is anything you need to change.”

In the study, Kei pushed a stack of thick documents in front of Su Nan.

Su Nan took a quick look at them and nodded in satisfaction: “Just go with this, when will it be built?”

“It should be done next month.” Kei smiled, “The instructors responsible for teaching the students have also been arranged, just waiting for the academy to be completed, they can be in place immediately.”

The war had just ended, and many things needed to be dealt with by him, the new Duke, but he still put the things Su Nan instructed first, often personally asking about them.

Seeing the Duke pay so much attention to this, the people below naturally dared not be lazy or neglectful, they worked with extraordinary enthusiasm, in just two or three months, the six Knight Academies were established from scratch, with extremely high efficiency.

“The recruitment of new students has also been started, all according to the template of the Dragonheart Knight Academy.”

Pausing for a moment, Kei hesitated for a moment, but still couldn’t help asking:

“Are you sure you only need seven Knight Academies? We don’t lack people or money now, we can build more.”@@novelbin@@

Now the entire Starfall Duchy was the Arnest Family’s, with the power of the entire country, not to mention seven Knight Academies, they could build one in every town if they wanted to.

Su Nan shook his head: “No, better to have quality than quantity.”

Building more Knight Academies was easy, but cultivating qualified Knight students was not so simple.

The most crucial issue was that the output of Dragon Blood Fruit couldn’t keep up.

To cultivate qualified Knight students in just four years, Dragon Blood Fruit was indispensable.

Otherwise, students from commoner and peasant backgrounds, with their natural qualifications and physical talents inferior to those of noble children, would simply not be able to be promoted to Knights in four years.

Even with the current seven Knight Academies, Su Nan had to open up several more Magic Plant Gardens to grow Dragon Blood Fruit in order to supply enough.

Any more would be beyond his capacity.

Maybe when he opened up more Magic Plant Gardens in the future, he could consider increasing the number of Knight Academies.

Seeing that Su Nan had said so, Kei didn’t persuade him further.

In fact, he had also considered whether to open a Knight Academy specifically for the recruitment of noble children, following the example of the Dragonheart Knight Academy.

But after careful consideration, he gave up the idea.

One was that he didn’t have enough Dragon Blood Fruit on hand, even if he did, they were used to supply the army.

Another was that noble families generally had their own inherited Breathing Techniques and martial skills, as well as special cultivation methods, making it impossible to achieve uniformity in this area.

Even partial uniformity.

Unless he could produce Breathing Techniques and martial skills stronger than those of all noble families, and more efficient cultivation methods.

In light of this, the feasibility of the idea of a noble Knight Academy was too low, so it had to be abandoned.

“How is the qualification testing going?”

Su Nan’s voice interrupted Kei’s contemplation.

Coming back to his senses, Kei smiled: “It’s going smoothly, the testing is over, there are a total of two hundred and twenty-three children with qualifications, I have already arranged for people to escort them to Shining Light City, they should arrive at the base in a few days.”

Su Nan nodded slightly.

The number was quite high.

After all, it was a qualification test covering six major provinces, it was normal for the number of qualified candidates to be higher.

This would bring the number of students at the base to almost two hundred and seventy.

And with time, this number would continue to grow.

“How’s your cultivation going lately?” Su Nan changed the topic.

“It’s almost stabilized.” Kei said with a beaming smile.

After taking the higher-grade Dragon Blood Fruit that Su Nan gave him, he successfully broke through to become a Legendary Knight.

Now, after half a year of settling down, his realm had basically stabilized, and he was currently seeking to break through to a higher realm.

Kei himself had excellent natural talent, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to become a High-Level Knight at nineteen, now that he was Duke, he had access to resources far exceeding those he had before, making his cultivation progress rapid and swift.

He was confident of breaking through to become a Second-Ring Legendary Knight before thirty-five, and a Third-Ring Legendary Knight before fifty.

After all, Evans, who had been considered a rare genius by the entire Duchy, was already eighty years old when he became a Third-Ring Legendary Knight.

This was just the most conservative estimate.

With Su Nan’s help, Kei was even confident of breaking through to become a Third-Ring Legendary Knight even earlier.

“That’s good.”

Su Nan nodded slightly.

His plan was to have his elder brother break through to become a Third-Ring Legendary Knight in twelve years, at which point he could also have him enter the Starsea Tower to challenge the Knight Trials.

From First-Ring Legendary to Third-Ring Legendary in twelve years, it wasn’t difficult if one was willing to invest resources.

Thinking about it this way, opening up new Magic Plant Gardens needed to be put on the agenda sooner rather than later.

Leaving the Duke’s Mansion, Su Nan was still thinking about the Magic Plant Gardens.

With the profit from the underground world’s mineral veins to support him, opening up Magic Plant Gardens wouldn’t worry about funding, the only thing to consider was manpower.

Flower Fairies were easy to solve, just let the Flower Fairy Queen Tiya summon another batch of her kin.

The key was the apprentices responsible for guarding them.

“Post a batch of guarding missions at the base, have the apprentices take turns guarding regularly.”

There were no Second-Rank Wizard Apprentices at the base yet, so opening up Magic Plant Gardens could only be done by Su Nan himself.

But the guarding work could be left to the students, setting the mission contribution points higher.

Just as a new batch of students was about to arrive at the base, they would be trained for a while and then able to accept various basic missions.

When the number of people who took basic missions increased, and the supply exceeded the demand, competition became fierce, and the senior students would naturally set their sights on guarding missions.

Time flew by like a white horse.

Thunderbolt Moon (April) passed by in a flash.

During this time, Su Nan participated in a meeting at the Mysterious Wooden Hut again, obtaining ten or so rare metals and four miniature Soul Crystals.

After this meeting, Su Nan finally gathered the materials for the third Magic Emblem Core.

After refining the third Magic Emblem Core, he immediately began the synthesis.

The synthesized 3rd-level Magic Emblem Core further increased the requirements for body and soul.

In addition to Spiritual Power having to reach 45 points, Physique also had to be above 40 points.

“My current Spiritual Power is 45.04, which just meets the requirement, but my Physique is only 36.37, still quite a bit off.”

Su Nan weighed the Magic Emblem Core in his hand and turned towards the warehouse.

His current Physique was about equivalent to a Junior Great Knight, the effect of the higher-grade Dragon Blood Fruit was still quite obvious, synthesizing and taking a few higher-grade Dragon Blood Fruits would quickly increase his Physique to above 40 points.

After two days of digesting the effects of the higher-grade Dragon Blood Fruit, Su Nan’s Physique successfully increased to 40.35.

Without hesitation, he immediately fused the 3rd-level Magic Emblem Core, and then went to the Magic Technique training area to test it.

Considering the power of the 3rd-level Magic Emblem Core, Su Nan didn’t use a Steel Magic Puppet as the test subject this time, but chose a higher-level Stone Magic Puppet with stronger fighting strength.

First was the attack power.

At full power, the metal spike storm formed by the Magic Emblem Core took only a dozen seconds to blast the higher-level Stone Magic Puppet into a state of disrepair, almost destroying it.

“Not bad, the attack power has probably increased by eighty to ninety percent.”

“Against a First-Ring Legendary Puppet, it would probably be able to kill it in one blow.”

Next was the defense power.

After a series of tests, Su Nan had a rough idea.

“In terms of defense power, it’s around 4800 to 5000, equivalent to the defense of five Extreme Protection Rings layered together.”

Su Nan nodded secretly.

With such high defense power, even a Formal Wizard wouldn’t be able to break through it in one attack.

What surprised Su Nan even more was that the Spiritual Power consumption, which he was most concerned about, had barely increased at all.

With his current Spiritual Power, it was enough to use the Magic Emblem Core for three minutes.

Even under high-intensity attacks, it could last for two minutes without any problem.

“If I can keep the upgrade trend of only increasing power without increasing consumption, when my Spiritual Power increases a bit more, the Magic Emblem Core will almost become a conventional weapon.”

A Magic Emblem Core that can be used conventionally, just thinking about it was scary!

Once it reached that point, Su Nan would basically be invincible below the level of Formal Wizards.

“The Magic Puppet Legion has also been successfully expanded.”

With Su Nan’s full commitment, the Magic Puppet Legion of Youhu City had expanded significantly in recent days.

Considering that he would not be refining Gold Magic Puppets or Secret Puppets in the short term, Su Nan used all four miniature Soul Crystals he had traded for to refine into Steel Magic Puppets.

Now the Magic Puppet Legion of Youhu City included nine Steel Magic Puppets, twenty Elite Stone Magic Puppets, three hundred Double-Bladed Spiders, and one thousand Stone Magic Puppets.

This lineup was already far superior to the previous Youhu City.

At least Carolina was stunned when she saw these Magic Puppets in the temporary military camp she had opened up.

The last bit of worry she had deep down about the impending insect plague vanished.

Come on, with such a powerful Magic Puppet Legion, what was a mere insect plague?

What she should be thinking about now was whether to counterattack Kasham.

To be honest, if he hadn’t wanted 玛图 and 奥森 to share some of the pressure, reduce casualties, and exterminate as many insects as possible outside to reduce the pressure for a future attack on Kasham, Su Nan would have just ignored the insect plague and attacked Kasham directly.

However, Su Nan didn’t have to wait long.

On the first day of the Month of Falling Flowers, the human-faced lion scouts stationed near Kasham reported that Kasham’s insect swarm had launched a large-scale attack.

Countless insects were swarming towards Youhu City!